Computer games are a very popular form of contemporary entertainment. Many of these computer games display an animated character in a virtual, on-screen environment. Movement and actions performed by the animated character can be controlled by the user and often the character interacts with other characters that are generated by the computer in the virtual environment.
In most conventional games, such a character is controlled either by specialized controllers which are part of the game apparatus that is associated with the computer, or by means of a conventional mouse, keyboard or joystick. When keyboards, mice or joysticks are used to control a character, the possible movement and actions of the character are limited due to the limited nature of these controls. Consequently, the character is often limited to simple actions, such as walking or jumping. The user has no actual physical contact with the character. Therefore, no matter how realistically the character is drawn on the screen, the user can only generally guide the character and cannot actually operate or interact directly with the character.
In order to overcome these difficulties, some conventional systems have associated a three dimensional toy with the computer in such a manner that a user can construct an on-screen character by manipulating interchangeable pieces of the three dimensional toy to physically construct a three dimensional model. The three dimensional model is connected to the computer and each of the interchangeable parts is connected to the toy by means of a coded connection. When the toy is connected to the computer, the computer reads the configuration of the toy and generates an on-screen character whose appearance matches that of the toy. Once the character is generated on screen, the user can then control the character by means of a conventional joy stick or controller. In an alternative embodiment, once the character is constructed, it is controlled solely by the computer and the user merely watches the character interact with other characters and objects in a virtual scene. An example of such a system is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,766,077. This system has the advantage in that it allows the user, especially a young user, to manually construct a character that has different characteristics that are chosen by the user during the construction of the toy.
However, with this system, once the graphic representation of the character is drawn on the computer screen, the user is then limited to controlling the character in a conventional manner with the joy stick, keyboard or game controller. Therefore, there is a need for an interactive game in which the user has more direct physical control over the graphical representation of the character on the computer screen.